Saturday, September 17, 2016

Meanwhile, in Canada...

Since I turned 40 (several years ago) I have been trying to learn more about current events, globally, and here in my home country of Canada. I want to be a responsible, informed citizen. It's easier said than done.

American news is everywhere. It's on the internet, on TV, and in the podcasts that I enjoy most. I have subscriptions to the New York Times website, and also Foreign Policy magazine (online and in print), so I have access to more US and global news than I can keep up with.

Canadian news is, ironically, more of a challenge. I listen to CBC radio news, and often read their website, but they are left-leaning and government funded, so I feel the need to balance their take with alternate views from the centre and/or right.

For a while I subscribed to the Globe and Mail online newspaper, but I didn't learn much from them. Their focus is firmly on financial and business news, which is not my priority. I wasn't impressed by their content, plus their servers are hella slow.

The only other option, to my mind, was the National Post newspaper, to which I now have an online subscription. I signed up last month and I have been struggling since then with technical difficulties.

I opened an account online, but the process didn't complete, so I had to call the customer service desk to get that sorted out. Then there was another call to get my account unlinked from a social media account that I don't use anymore, which was screwing with my ability to log in. A third call was needed when my credit card bill arrived, showing two charges from NP in the same month, which turned out to be because I had been signed up for both digital access (i.e. the website), which I did want, and their ePaper (allows you to view the paper page-by-page on a tablet as though you were looking at the print version), which I didn't want or need. Every time I think I've gotten all the problems sorted out, I discover another one.

The website doesn't work on Safari, the default browser on my Mac at home. I have to open Chrome to read the newspaper. Their mobile app is rated so poorly in the Google Play store that I haven't even bothered to install it on my phone. (The New York Times app, incidentally, is great.)

I understand that newspapers are struggling right now to make the transition from paper to digital formats. I get that Canada's news media in particular are fighting to remain relevant in an increasingly non-local world. I want to support Canadian news media so that they are able to survive; so that we do have some alternatives to the government-funded CBC. But heck. The National Post has been a massive pain. It's really testing my commitment.

4 comments:

I admire your attempts to stay informed despite all the glitches. I get most news from my internet feed (free). We also have a weekend subscription to our local paper, but I find the stories in there, I've already gotten from my free internet feed. I wouldn't be surprised if physical newspapers are someday gone altogether.

I do not listen to the news and only read the newspaper or online news if a headline strikes me. I am depending on the Emergency Broadcast Network to break in if we truly have serious news to know about. Otherwise everything is "Breaking News" even if it is a broken toenail of some famous person.